


Effect: +100% Love, -100% Logic

by manamune



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, Frenemies, M/M, MMORPGs, OT5 Friendship, Online Romance, Pining, Swimming, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8047744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manamune/pseuds/manamune
Summary: In the real world, Lance is barely making it by in his senior year. He's failing most of his classes and is only one more fuck up away from being kicked off the swim team.In the virtual reality game Voltron, Lance lives an entirely different life as the internationally-known Blue, an archer with impeccable aim. He's filthy rich, has a trillion friends, and is a part of the most feared guild in the game.There's just one problem: he's madly in love one of his guildmates, Red. Things begin to go downhill when a kid who acts suspiciously similar to Red transfers to Lance's school.





	1. Chapter 1

Zarkon is no joke.

He’s become a bit of a meme in the Voltron community for his stupid voice lines, but he’s still hard as nails and anyone who runs into him face-first in battle without preparation is going to get their ass kicked.

Luckily, Lance and his guild aren’t pushovers, or idiots. Save that time they tried to fight Sendak in all wooden armor.

He laughs, readying his bow and drawing the string back. It’s not the most realistic of motions; Lance doubts the developers were thinking of accuracy when they created it. Voltron uses state-of-the-art technology to imitate real-world actions and movements. Being accurate would be too tiring. Lance has better things to do than worry about getting arm cramps after an hour.

“Blue, now would be a good time to shoot!”

Lance rolls his eyes, lowering his bow slightly to look over at Yellow—or, Hunk, as Lance knew him in real life, albeit they never used their real names in-game. There’s too many creepy people out there, and ‘Blue’ fits their colour-coded theme far better than ‘Lance’ would. He doesn’t even wield a lance.

“It takes time to charge,” he sighs, repeating for the dozenth time. No one understood how using a bow actually worked. It wasn’t instantaneous stuff. Pooling the magic into the bow to create the massive fire displays that made the others cheer took time, especially with the server lag that was plaguing them lately.

“Well, you might want to make it go faster,” Green says, slashing through a row of Galra, Zarkon’s pitiful minions. They were the most common enemy in Voltron and generally used as fodder. After getting his 10,000th Galra kill and the corresponding achievement a few weeks ago, he’s sick and done with fighting them.

“Not happening,” Lance snorts, raising his bow again. The charge time ends with a ‘ding’ in his ear and he lets the arrow fly, straight into Zarkon’s chest.

Zarkon sways, and then topples over, his arm smacking Red right in the face. Lance laughs.

“Blue, don’t laugh at your teammates,” Black commands. Lance can hear him stifling his owner laughter. He smiles and sheathes his bow, running over to where Red is lying on the ground, face-up and panting.

Lance holds out his hand and Red turns his head towards him. He takes off his helmet and throws it a bit aways, sucking in a deep breath, no doubt dizzy from battle.

He has no idea what Red looks like in real life, but looking at him in-game will never get old. He feels breathless when he sees Red after a good fight, when his hair is sticky, matted to his cheeks, and his face is flushed, reflecting on his name.

“Come on,” Lance says, waving his hand. “We don’t have time to lie around.”

Red takes it and stands up, picking up his helmet on the way and tucking it into his bag, practically bottomless with all the upgrades he’s bought for it. Lance wishes he had one of those for school.

“He hit me in the face,” Red says, fixing his gloves. They only cover half his hand, which Lance thinks is stupid. What’s the point of them if they barely cover anything? And don’t let him get started on Red’s silly crop top. No matter how good-looking Red looked in it, it was completely impractical. “I’m allowed a moment to recover.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have been standing right in front of him,” Lance counters, shifting his weight onto his other side. Red takes out a green potion, unscrewing the cap on the bottle and downing it in one, long sip. He makes a face after; they do taste pretty awful. Lance knows that from experience. “That’s Black’s job.”

“Yeah, because I’m totally going to do damage standing twenty feet away like you, right?” Red twirls one of his daggers around his fingers. All of Red’s daggers are made out of obsidian, courtesy of their guild’s week-long farming fest last month.

“That’s why bows are better,” Lance says cheekily, eyes crinkling.

Red huffs and shakes his head. They’ve had this conversation a thousand times. “Sure.”

He jogs to follow Black as they head further into the cavern, leaning over and whispering something into his ear. Lance bites his lip and catches up to Hunk. While he’s never asked, he’s ninety-nine perfect sure that Black and Red know each other in real life. Or, at the very least, they speak outside of the game, far more than Lance does with Red.

As much as he’d like to say he isn’t jealous, he is. Hunk pats his back and smiles at him.

“You’re making the face,” Hunk says.

Lance forces his expression into a scowl. “I don’t have a face.”

“Uh, yeah,” Green slips in beside them, the pace of her feet exact to theirs. “You totally do. It’s like this.”

She stops walking, then opens her mouth and widens her eyes.

“You look stupid,” Lance grumbles and walks faster. He does _not_ have a face.

Hunk and Green laugh behind him, talking amongst themselves about Lance’s expressions. He absently sorts his inventory as they walk to keep himself occupied, and to act like he’s doing something important and not just avoiding his friends.

When they reach the innermost part of the cave, it opens up, the ceilings sloping upwards until they were one-hundred feet tall. A single spot of light shines in the center of the alcove, illuminating a chest that sits on a metal platform.

“Sweet, sweet loot,” Green says.

Black goes to the chest and slowly lifts the top up. The light gets brighter and brighter, until their loot rises into the center of the room, glowing. Physics didn’t have a place in video games, apparently.

“Looks like… more obsidian, some stone gear, and a blueprint.”

“Fantastic,” Red groans.

They had more than enough obsidian after farming it for Red’s weapons, and at their level, stone gear was useless. Lance didn’t understand why it was in the chest at all for them.

“I’ll take the blueprint I guess.” Green holds out her hand and the blueprint flies over, vanishing when it touches her palm. The rest of the loot drops to the ground when no one takes it.

“The rest can go to Allura,” Black decides, scooping it up and putting it into his bag. “Sorry, guys.”

“Not your fault the loot system sucks,” Red says. He puts his helmet on again and readies his daggers for the fight back to the outside. The rest of them follow suit; Lance takes out his bow again and begins charging his arrows.

Another problem: their formation meant that Lance was as far as possible from Red when fighting. He stood at the very back, while Red and Black fought in the front. Green took out the lesser monsters, and Hunk acted as a secondary tank, or midline fighter whenever Allura joined them.

He can’t randomly change his positioning in fights, though. Black and Allura would kick his ass for trying, and it would screw up their team massively for Lance to get in the others’ way.

Most of the time, he ends up staring at the back of Red’s head and thinking about how totally screwed he is for having a crush on someone he doesn’t know the real name of.

They reach the exit of the cave quickly. With Zarkon defeated, only lesser Galra minions are spawned, and they’re nothing compared to the torrent of elements that come from their team.

“It is so stuffy in there,” Red says when they exit the cave. He takes off his helmet again. Lance mentally notes to make Red a new one; he obviously doesn’t like his current one. It doesn’t suit the rest of his outfit, either. They both switched over to leather armor a few months ago when their shared class got a rework. Red’s helmet was the only thing he not replaced yet.

“Yeah,” Lance agrees, wiping sweat off his forehead. He’s going to be drenched when he takes off the virtual reality gear.

“Good work, you guys,” Black says, throwing an arm around Green’s shoulders and ruffling her hair. She makes a face like she hates it. Lance knows that she secretly loves being pampered by him. He’s like her older sister. “Let’s get back to Allura.”

Allura is sitting in their guild house, flipping through the marketplace. She’s their second-strongest member after Black, and yet she spends most of her time organizing guild-related events and making them rich. She’s been playing Voltron for the longest out of them, by far. Lance assumes that she’s tired of slashing recoloured monsters for hours on end.

“Hello,” she greets, closing the marketplace and standing up. She shakes Black’s hand and the items they received from the chest are transferred to her. “Not much, hm?”

“Not at all,” Black admits. He takes a seat at their table, arms propped onto the wood.

“Ah, well,” she straightens her back and musters her best leader voice. “Next time.”

Lance flops himself on the couch, shutting his eyes. He should get off soon and shower. He’s been staying up on too many school nights and his grades have been taking a hit. He didn’t care last year, or the year before that, but his final year’s marks are more important than the other three years combined.

Red sits by his feet and opens his own view of the marketplace. Lance opens one eye and peers over, surveying Red’s screen. He has roughly ten-thousand Galra feet for sale, all for exactly one gold.

“That’s a lot of feet,” Lance comments. “You could use them to make potions.”

“You expect me to carry around ten-thousand feet in my bag? Do you have any idea how terrible that would smell?” Red glares at him, and then laughs. Lance grins at him and shrugs.

It sucks, how he’ll probably never meet Red. He might never find out his real name. It would’ve bummed him out a few months ago, however, he’s trying to get over it. After numerous late-night sleepovers with Hunk, containing countless hours of ranting about Red (his personality, his looks, his stupid mullet—there were two-hundred hair options and he had to choose that one?) he’s come to the realization that it’s fine.

There’s plenty of fish in the sea. It just so happens that Red is the one in front of him now. That doesn’t mean there won’t be others.

That thought doesn’t stop the jump in his heart when Red so much as smiles at him.

“I need to sleep,” Red says. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“See you,” Green yawns. “Me too.”

“Me three,” Hunk says. He gives a little wave. All three of them disappear.

“Same.” Lance looks over the top of the bed. Allura and Black are having the virtual version of tea, discussing their guild’s entry into the weekly tournament.

“Good night, Blue,” they both say at the same time. Lance logs off.

He pulls the virtual reality helmet off, taking in a deep breath of real-life air. Being cramped underneath that thing for hours is way more uncomfortable than shooting his bow. He unzips himself from the matching suit and pulls on his sleeveless shirt.

A message from Hunk appears on his computer screen when he closes the Voltron program.

(23:32) Hunk: Have u studied for Chem at all

Of course, once they exited the game, real life just had to come crashing back to them. Lance didn’t want to think about chemistry now. Or ever.

(23:33) Lance: lol no  
(23:33) Lance: when would i even have time 2 study  
(23:33) Hunk: I don’t know  
(23:33) Hunk: We are so screwed

He puts his computer into sleep mode and goes to take a shower. He should develop a study application for Voltron. Every time he shoots an arrow, he has to answer a homework-related question. It’s well within his skill repertoire, but that would involve actively doing work, and between Voltron and extra-curricular activities, he doesn’t have time for that.

After washing all of the sweat off himself, he crawls into bed and turns off his light.

At this time, every day, his mind wanders to Red. The only thing he knows about him, other than that he can’t hold his tongue, is that he’s the same age as himself. As their guild recruiter, Allura knows Red’s personal information, and they’ve all been screened to make sure they’re in the same age group.

The rest remains a mystery to Lance.

He’s thought about making the first move and offering Red his screen name on skype, but there’s always something that stops him. Red might ask him why Lance wants his contact information when they can easily speak in-game, or he might flat-out ask Lance if he has a crush on him.

In which Lance would have to delete his character and move countries out of embarrassment. So, not an option.

He dreams about Red’s mullet instead of the modern tragedy of Lance’s one-sided virtual crush in order to keep himself sane.

* * *

“We are so screwed,” Hunk cries, burying his face into his textbook.

“Hey, no matter how much we fuck up this test, at least we have our charming in-game good looks to fall back on.”

They have exactly one hour until their test. Lance has studied roughly five pages out of the one-hundred he was supposed to memorize. Chemistry isn’t hard for him so much as utterly boring. He can’t read one sentence without his mind drifting back to the next item combination he’s going to try or new fighting strategies.

“I don’t think we can make a career out of fighting the Galra,” Hunk groans, sniffling. The top of his textbook is stained with coffee. Lance expects their school to charge him a pretty penny for defacing one of their books.

“You never know,” Lance says, flipping the page. “I heard Shay made a pretty penny by power leveling people. Like, letting them follow her around while she killed Galra.”

“That’s because she’s doing an engineering degree and has other ways to support herself. We’re not at that step yet!”

Lance taps his finger against his lips, biting the tip of the eraser.

“Alright, alright. Let’s focus. We got this.”

If there was a narrator to Lance’s life, there would be a voiceover at that moment saying: _but Lance did not have this._

“Fuck my life,” Lance says two hours later when he walks out of their chemistry classroom.

“That was so easy!” Hunk cheers, slapping Lance’s back.

Lance slumps over, listening as Hunk chatters to a group of acquaintances about all of the questions that Lance definitely got wrong. He didn’t study much, but the questions he did do he got all right. And yet, when he looked at the ones on the test, he completely blanked out. For his final answer, he drew a dog. He hopes his teacher likes dogs enough to give him pity points.

It was one test out of five, but they were already three tests in, including the one he wrote only a few minutes ago. His average isn’t good enough to get into the program he wants to.

He knows whose fault it is. He just doesn’t want to face the idea that he might have to cut back on having fun in order to accomplish real-world goals.

“Hey,” a voice says. Lance turns around, looking for Hunk, and then realizes there’s someone standing in front him that is decidedly not his best friend. “Are you Lance McClain?”

Lance looks the boy up and down. He’s around Lance’s height, perhaps an inch or two shorter, with roughly the same build. And, god, he has the same ugly mullet as Red; black strands that framed his jaw and tumbled over his shoulders.

He’s never seen him before. Their school is big, but not big enough that Lance wouldn’t recognize him from passing him by in the hallway. That means that Lance has been assigned to guide a new kid around. He regrets signing up for that program immensely.

“Yeah,” he says. “What’s up?”

“I’m new,” he says shortly. Lance stares at him; it’s incredibly awkward. He decides to be the better person and hold out his hand.

“Cool,” Lance tries to smile. “What’s your name?”

“Keith.” Keith shakes his hand. Lance can see the veins on the underside of his wrist. He doesn’t look like a person who gets out a lot.

“Well, Keith,” Lance leans against a locker. “I would love to show you around, but I just got my ass kicked by this test, so I’m going to go wallow in self-pity for a bit. I can do it tomorrow, though?”

Keith shoves his hands in his pockets, fingering the inside of the fabric. “I’m good at chemistry. Do you need help?”

“Uh,” Lance blinks, momentarily surprised by the offer. Keith doesn’t look like the social type to offer help. “It’s not that I’m bad it, I just didn’t study.”

“Right.” Keith doesn’t look offended by his rejection, only bemused. “You sound like you have your life together.”

Lance crosses his arm and frowns. “I have other things in my life too,” he says. He doesn’t want Keith to think his school mentor is some kind of misprioritized weirdo. Which he is. Keith doesn’t need to know that.

“Okay,” Keith says, pulling out his phone. Lance grits his teeth when Keith ignores him. He doesn’t like being ignored. Keith isn’t the social type, then; he’s trying to make new friends at a new school while being socially awkward. “I’ll find you tomorrow morning. I don’t know where any of my classes are.”

Keith types furiously on his phone. It’s a wonder how the glass of his phone screen doesn’t break underneath his thumb’s force.

“Fine,” Lance says. “I usually hang around the forum until classes start.”

“Okay,” Keith repeats, and then walks away. The back of his plaid shirt extends to cover the upper half of his thighs. What was _with_ impractical fashion these days?

“Who was that?” Hunk asks, sliding in behind him.

“Some new kid,” Lance sighs, turning to Hunk. “Can we go now?”

“Sure,” Hunk says, frowning. “Is something wrong?”

“Aside from how my mark dropped by five-percent from that test? Did you see that guy? He had a mullet.”

“Damn,” Hunk whistles, throwing his arm around Lance’s shoulder and pulling him into a sympathetic half-hug. “That sucks. I think the universe is trying to tell you to confess.”

“Ha ha,” Lance laughs lifelessly, allowing Hunk to drag him down the hallway. “Very funny.”

“Really, though, who has a mullet in this day and age besides Red? How have we met two mullet-wearing people in the span of a year? That’s a one-hundred percent increase in the mullets we’ve seen in the other sixteen years of our lives.” Hunk’s eyebrows furrow.

“Tell me about it,” Lance mumbles. “I never want to see another mullet again.”

It’s a complete lie and they both know it. There’s nothing more Lance wants to do than get home as soon as possible and talk to Red.

Hunk gives him a knowing smile and treats him to gourmet ice cream to wash away his heartache.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to make full info sheets for everyone in this au (in the mmorpg) soon... i can't draw but i want to at least write down the info!
> 
> please let me know what you think by commenting below or messaging me! or even better, discuss mmorpg aus with me. o7
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr](http://koizumi.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/tsukaleoluvr69)!


	2. Chapter 2

Lance did not sprint home after he finished his ice cream and bid his goodbyes to Hunk.

And he did not make a list of things he wanted to talk to Red about when he got online.

And he _absolutely_ did not trip on his stairs as he was running to his bedroom.

“Ow, ow, ow,” he yelps, holding his knee to his chest as he hobbles onto the last step. Okay, so maybe he was a tad overexcited. He’s allowed to be, after Hunk let him have his weekly ‘I love Red and life sucks!’ vent session.

He’s always excited to see Red. Or talk about him. Or think about it.

Fuck, he is seriously doomed.

It only takes a few moments for him to pull his shirt over his head and undo his pants so he can pull on the VR suit. The helmet is next; he fastens it over his head using the strap and then presses the button on the side to secure it.

After pulling the visor down, the game always took an extraordinarily long time to load him into the servers and calibrate the suit. It tightens around his body, imitating the pressure of the environment, and then releases once he loads into their guild house.

“Hey, I—You are not Red,” he says, then cuts off when he sees Green lounging on the couch.

“What an astute observation. Do you want a prize?” Green flips to the next page in her book, then licks her finger and pulling down the corner, marking her place. She throws it into her bag and stands up. “He hasn’t logged in yet.”

“Ugh,” Lance groans and then turns around. “No one else is here?”

“Allura went to the fields to check on a tip we received of an invasion. She said she’ll ping us if something comes up. Not that there was anyone here to ping except me. And you, I guess.” She puts one hand on her hip and looks him up and down.

He grimaces, crossing his arms. He always feels like she’s trying to pick him apart in her brain. “Well, I’m going to head into Altea then. There’s no point in standing around in here.”

It’s almost good that Red isn’t here. It gives him ample time to pick up the materials he’ll need to craft a better helmet for Red, one that doesn’t make him choke mid-battle.

Green smiles knowingly. “I see,” she says sagely, dropping her voice into a whisper. “Is this about Red?”

“No. Maybe. Yes. Why?” Lance turns away from her to check the marketplace prices. Expensive leather is, well, expensive, but it’s pocket change compared to the gold he can earn through tournaments, both judging them and participating in them. It’s worth it for Red.

“The fact that you called his name when you appeared kind of tipped me off.”

“He’s usually here at this time,” Lance defends himself. “I need to leave before he logs in.”

“Alright, cool,” Green says. She tightens the straps of her bag around her shoulders. “I’ll come with you.”

Lance’s hands fly up. “Hey, hey! When did I invite you?”

“I can do whatever I want.” Green opens her inventory and pulls out a pair of obnoxiously bright sunglasses, sliding them on. “Deal with it.”

“That was so,” Lance cringes, “cringe-worthy.”

“You’re cringe-worthy,” she shoots back, sticking out her tongue. “Put on your disguise and let’s get out of here before ‘Red comes back’.” Her voice goes higher, imitating Lance’s, which is not hilarious at all considering his voice is deeper than hers.

“These disguises don’t even work half the time,” he grumbles. He takes out what Allura dubs his disguise from the masses. They all have a set that changes often; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to take two steps into any major city without being bombarded by approximately one million friend requests.

His so-called disguise consists of a set of wooden gear and a tin helmet. They aren’t even suited for his class. No self-respecting thief would ever wear heavy armour. Green’s is supposed to be regular cloth and a broken wand, but she adds the sunglasses every time herself.

Turning off their guild tag is a must too. Even more than their names, their guild title Legendary Defenders and tag VLD are both extremely famous. A little too famous, if you asked both Black and Allura. It was nice to be recognized, however, it came with a lot of tedious procedures too. Like wearing silly disguises.

“I hate wearing this,” Lance frowns, pulling at the edges of the armour. “How do people fight in this stuff?”

“Life is so hard for you,” Green laments, tapping his back.

They teleport to the central of Altea’s marketplace. There’s a moment of server lag when he appears where his vision blurs and there’s a strange pooling sensation in his stomach, making him dizzy. It filters out eventually, and he’s left with the sore sight of thousands of other people trying to sell their goods.

“There’s so many people here nowadays,” Green says, mild disgust evident in her voice. “I can’t imagine how much it must cost to keep the servers up underneath this load. It’d be cheaper to make another city.”

“There are other cities. Just no one goes to them.” He squints and looks around. As he surveys the crowd, the titles of their shops pop up overhead. Inflation is making prices rise higher and higher. He expects another gold sink to appear in Voltron soon.

“Goo, goo, goo… more goo… is that the only food that these people know how to craft? Who would willingly subject themselves to that?” She blanches, keeling over and pretending to choke.

“I have no idea. Come on, we’re not going to find any leather here.”

She hangs onto his shoulder and follows him through the crowd. Many of the people who run shops at this time are asleep, and they leave on their VR gear so that they can sell their items still. Lance has no idea how that’s possible when people are constantly bumping into and elbowing others to get by.

“What tier are you looking for? Five?” Green asks.

“Of course,” Lance mumbles, feeling his cheeks burn. “It’s for Red.”

“Why did I even ask?”

Slowly, the stores selling food ease into weapons, and then armour, and then materials. The architecture in Altea’s marketplace is gorgeous; every detail was meticulously crafted and modelled to look and feel as realistic as possible. He can imagine waking up into the game and thinking it’s real life for a moment. Too bad it’s covered by all of the shops.

“Here’s some,” Green says, stopping. She tugs on him and he turns to look at the store in front of them. “Fifty gold a piece.”

“Fifty gold a piece?” Lance almost jumps.

“Time is money, Blue. Money is love.” She taps her wrist, wiggling her eyebrows.

“I hate this stupid game,” Lance groans, not meaning it in the slightest. “Fine, move over. I need to craft this before Red comes on and teleports to us.”

She steps to the side, grinning wildly. She most likely thinks this is funny. He mutters to himself about capitalism and his awful friends as he fishes out five-hundred gold from his bag. Ten pieces should be enough. He doubts Red wants something that covers his whole head; a single, thick strip of leather to cover his forehead infused with a healthy amount of bonuses should please him a lot more.

He holds the leather pieces under his arm. “There’s a crafting station just outside the market,” he says.

“Right.”

They push through the last of the crowd. Once they exit the market, it becomes significantly less busy. Most of the people who walk around Altea who aren’t setting up shops are new players; Altea is the first city that many of them traverse to, being the easiest to get to from the starting area.

“Oh, man. I almost want to turn on my guild tag and run up to all of these guys. Look, that elementalist is using a wand. A wand! As an elementalist.”

“Aren’t you using a wand as an elementalist right now?” Lance rolls his eyes and sets the leather down on the crafting station. He filters through his inventory; he carries around a healthy amount of common to semi-rare materials, usually for potions. They’ll work for enchanting the helmet too, though.

“That’s different. I’m pretending to be new. I’m not actually new.”

She leans against the brick wall beside the station as he sets about working. The game automates most of it, but he knows a few tricks to have the quality turn out better. It’s mechanical to him now, winding the materials together and setting in the infusions.

The only reason why he’s giddy is because he gets to present it to Red.

“Shiny,” Green says, watching him.

“After a few minutes, it should turn red.” He looks down at his craftsmanship. The threading on the bandana is perfect, and it practically glows with power. He bites his tongue to stop himself from breaking into a smile that Green will tease him for.

“Still colour-coding, I see. I think we should break free from these stereotypes. Why can’t I wear, like, purple? What’s wrong with someone named Green wearing purple?” She shakes her fist at the sky.

“His favourite colour is red. Isn’t your favourite colour green?” he tilts his head at her.

She clamps her mouth shut, then scowls. “Maybe.”

“No complaining, then.”

He takes a step back from the station to let it settle, joining her against the wall. A kid stumbles over the stairs to the market; he’s new, judging by the massive, chipped steel sword hanging off his back. It’s way too big for him.

“Aww,” Green croons. “That guy looks like what I think you look like in real life.”

Lance almost falls over on his feet. “What the hell? I’m way taller than that, thank you!”

“Sure.”

“I look the exact same as I do here,” he frowns. He made it a point to have himself look the same. He didn’t want to run around with some other person’s face—he was the only Blue and the only Lance there was.

“I’m just kidding.” Green shrugs. “Yellow showed me a picture of your guys’ middle school graduation.”

Lance really does fall over this time.

“What—the fuck? You’re kidding, right?” He bumps his head against the wall and scrambles to stand up, yelling curses at Hunk in his head.

“You wish.”

He sniffles from betrayal. “Remind me to yell at him when he comes on. Isn’t there some kind of unspoken rule that we’re not supposed to talk our real lives?”

“No?” Green snorts. “That’s all you, buddy. Also, you might want to check on your thing for Red.”

“What—Oh, shit,” he says, and turns to face the crafting table. He stops it quickly and looks it over; it’s slightly darker than he wanted, but it would have to do. He doubts that Red will mind it.

“Well, if anyone asks why it doesn’t match the rest of his outfit, he can say it’s dark like his soul.”

Lance slaps his palm against his face.

“It’s fine, right?” he mutters, folding the helmet and slipping it into his bag. “It looks fine.”

“Of course it does,” Green soothes him gently. “And just so you know, he logged in four minutes ago.”

Lance opens their guild’s member list and, as Green said, Red’s name is lit up. Last log-in: four minutes ago.

“Shit, okay. Okay. Okay.” Lance takes a deep breath. Red’s location lists him at being at their guild house still. All he needs to do is teleport back and he’ll end up face-to-face with him. “Right. Okay.”

“You got this,” Green gives him a little wave. “I’ll give you guys some, heh, alone time, and find Allura.”

Lance swallows. He suddenly feels like he’s about to swim a race. Or give his crush a gift. Both of them give him the same feeling of apprehensive excitement.

When he doesn’t move, Green slaps his back, and he takes that as his cue to go to their guild house.

There’s a lot less lag with significantly less to load, and it only takes a few seconds for the environment to materialize around him. Red jumps on his heels and faces him.

“Hey,” Red says. “Where is everyone?”

“Green and Allura are, uh, doing something,” Lance replies. That was not a good answer. “I mean, they’re inspecting a possible quest for us.”

“Oh.” Red’s eyebrows furrow. “Alright then. Is something wrong?”

Lance leans on the nearby table, laughing anxiously. “Something wrong? Nope. Not at all.”

“Right then,” Red says dubiously and pulls out a chair and sits down on it, crossing his legs. “I need to wait for Allura. I have some real life stuff that needs to be taken care of so I won’t be on as much for the next few days.”

“Huh?” Lance lets the noise slip before he can stop it. Quickly, he sits down across from Red. “I’ve never—we don’t usually take breaks. Do we?”

“It’s not a break that I can help.” Red presses his cheek to his palm.

Lance swallows. Suddenly, the tentative excitement from gift-giving eases into complete worry. “Are you in trouble?”

Red narrows his eyes at him. “What kind of a person do you think I am?”

Lance throws his hands up in the air, feeling especially guilty under Red’s scrutinizing gaze. “I wasn’t implying anything! The way you were talking made me think it was something bad.”

“It’s not bad. It’s—I won’t be able to get online for a few days, that’s all. I’m moving.”

“Oh.” Lance’s shoulders fall in relief. “Well, you can always talk to me if you want. I used to move around a lot as a kid. Some people get used to it fast, but it always took me a long time. Moving away from my friends and stuff.” He tries to give an encouraging smile.

Red blinks at him. “It is a little hard,” he admits.

“Anytime!” Lance says a little too loudly. “We’re friends, right? Friends can talk to each other about anything.”

“Yeah,” Red agrees. “Thanks, Blue.” He smiles and Lance’s heart does a joyful somersault, knowing that Red’s smile is because of him.

Then, Lance does what is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever: he holds out his fist for a fist bump.

Red stares at him. Lance stares back. He has to keep his fist up else he’ll seem even more awkward than he actually is.

Eventually, Red lifts his own hand and curls it into his fist. His gloves crackle and he pushes his fist to Lance’s.

Lance is very, very grateful that he can lower it and put that awful experience behind him.

“I made you something,” he says hastily to avoid having to talk about how he just forced Red to fist bump him.

“You… made me something?” Red repeats, smile falling.

“I made you something,” Lance echoes him. Great, now he’s making things even more awkward. He opens his inventory and brings the helmet to the top of his bag, then pulls it out and lays it over the table. “It’s, uh, a helmet, obviously. Since you said you didn’t like your current one. It’s tier five leather, with a dexterity bonus.”

Red’s eyes widen, and he looks down at the helmet, slowly taking it into his hands. It shimmers when the trade is accepted, and Lance watches as it disappears from his inventory into Red’s.

“Where did you get the leather from?”

Lance gestures vaguely to the air. “I had some lying around.”

“Better that than my ten-thousand Galra feet,” Red laughs. He takes off his stiff helmet and replaces it with the one Lance made. It doesn’t fit his colour scheme of deep, crimson red, but the knowledge that Red is now wearing equipment made entirely by him fills him with a deep-set feeling of satisfaction.

Red adjusts it on his forehead, pulling it underneath his fringe and letting his hair fall over it. Finally, he ties it at the back.

“It’s good?” Lance asks, resisting the urge to bite on his nails.

“It’s great.” Red shoves his old helmet into his bag. “Thank you, again. I think I’ve said ‘thank you’ in the past ten minutes more than I usually do in a week.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Lance nudges Red in the shoulder. “I’ll go back to proving how much better I am than you soon enough.”

“Is that a challenge?” Red smirks, leaning back in his chair.

“You bet your ass it is.”

The room brightens, and then Lance feels his arms prickle with the air that comes from teleportation.

“Ah, the lovebirds are here!” Allura says, clapping her hands. Lance hits his elbow on the table.

“What?” Red says, then whips his head towards Lance. “Are you okay?”

“Yup! Fine. I’m fine!” Lance shakes his arm, crying internally.

“I said the birds are here,” Allura corrects. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a brown and red toy bird. “See?”

Green pops out from behind her. “Don’t ask,” she warns.

Red looks between Allura and Lance, confusion written all over his face before it settles back into his usual, emotionless-with-a-side-of-frown expression. “Allura, can I talk to you in private? It’s about the upcoming week.”

Allura clears her throat and sets the bird down on the table. “Of course,” she says. “In the other room?”

Red nods and then stands up, tapping his fingers against the wood to catch Lance’s attention. As if Lance could ever take his eyes off him.

“Thanks again,” he says, and follows Allura into the side room. She shuts the door behind them, sparing a guilty glance at Lance.

“If your levels of fear from just now could be illustrated in a movie, it’d be pretty damn scary,” Green says, squeezing into the seat beside him.

“You don’t need to tell me that.” Lance hides his reddened face in his hands, trying to rub away the flush. “Do you know what they’re talking about?”

“Nope,” Green replies. “If he’s talking to Allura and not Black, it must be important.”

Lance sighs and looks at the door. “Yeah.”

Him and Red have always been like that; extremely competitive, and for a long time, it seemed that talking about anything personal would ruin that level of competitiveness. Now, though, with his feelings for Red becoming increasingly more obvious, the urge to offer his help as a person rather than simply a guildmate is getting stronger and stronger.

He presses his face to the table until it cools and proceeds to give Hunk a piece of his mind when he logs in.

* * *

Lance isn’t sure whether to be happy or sad the next day, looking back on the events of last night.

On one hand, Red not only accepted his gift, but wore it and liked it. It’s pretty much the best reaction he could have hoped for, short of Red reaching across the table and giving him a kiss.

Which was silly, because that would mean Red would be kissing the air, since Lance lived god knows how far away from him in reality.

The thought means that he leaves for school a little more sad than happy.

He’s leaning against a column, absently scrolling down his social media on his phone when he feels a tap on his shoulder.

“What—Oh, it’s you.” Lance lowers his phone and sees Keith, the guy from yesterday, standing in front of him. His outfit today is just as bad as the one Lance saw him in previously. His jacket cuts off half-way, and it’s far too poofy to be cute. “Hey. There’s only like half an hour before class starts, so come on.”

Keith nods and takes out his own phone, right as Lance puts his own away. Lance bites the inside of his cheek, debating whether to speak up, then sighs.

“How are you going to know how to get to your classes if you aren’t paying attention?”

Keith doesn’t look up at him when he answers, “I am paying attention. Just give me a moment.”

Lance purses his lips. Keith is new, he reminds himself. Maybe he’s from somewhere far away where they don’t have proper manners.

When he’s finished, Keith slips his phone into his pocket. “Let’s go.”

Glad to have your permission, Lance thinks to himself. Keith lists off his classes and Lance guides him around the school. Keith has a strikingly similar course selection to Lance’s; it’s chalk full of science and maths. Keith hadn’t been joking when he was good at those subjects, if he was ready to take them all at once. Now Lance actually had to study so Keith wouldn’t see him failing and think he lied about being smart.

“We have our second and fourth periods together,” Lance says, stopping in front of his chemistry classroom. “So, this one. You can talk to me in either of them if you need any help with school-related things. Or… anything else, too, I guess.”

Keith peers inside the classroom. No one is in there right now, but the first class to use it has their daily schedule already written out on the corner of the board.

“Actually, there is something I need help with,” Keith says after a pause. “I just moved here and I put all of my stuff in a storage locker. They’re giving me two days to remove everything before I have to pay extra to keep it there. I can’t move it all by myself, though.”

“Your parents can’t help with that?” Lance isn’t trying to be rude; he’s genuinely confused.

“I’m an orphan,” Keith replies shortly. “My parents died when I was a kid.” 

Great, now Lance is a dick, too.

“Uh,” he coughs. “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s been like that forever,” Keith says, shrugging. “Don’t be sorry. Just give me a yes or no answer so I know whether I have to find someone else.”

Lance’s face scrunches up. He has a swim practice tonight, albeit he can skip it like he’s done with the past few ones. His coach warned him that if he continued to skip he’d lose his co-captain position, though, so he didn’t want to risk it.

The other option was that he could skip going on Voltron for one night. Red wouldn’t be online, and they didn’t have any events scheduled. He’s never really actively gone out of his way to not go online, but he probably owes Keith this for commenting on his dead parents.

“Is tonight after school fine? I’m on the swim team and we have a practice for an hour or so, but I’m free after.”

Keith doesn’t smile; his eyes crinkle in a way that makes Lance think that he’s happy. Possibly? He honestly can’t tell.

“Sounds good,” Keith says. “I’m going to go to my class. Thanks.”

He takes out his phone and begins texting as he walks away. Lance stands by the lockers, a little dumbfounded. He wonders if Keith is one of those people who are addicted to texting.

Not that Lance can judge, when he’s addicted to video games.

Keith ends up sitting directly in front of Lance in AP Calculus. It gives him a good view of Keith’s hair and his restless leg syndrome.

Lance is an expert in mullets after staring at Red for a longer time than he’d like to admit. While Red’s hair is relatively wavy, Keith’s is straight and flips up at the back. The observation makes him smile, and then frown. He should not be condoning mullets in 2016.

He spends the rest of the day passing notes with Hunk and staring out the window, daydreaming about Red.

There’s definitely nothing new about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again! thank you so much for the warm welcome on the first chapter. it makes me so, so happy to know that other people enjoyed reading this, because i really enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> please let me know what you think of this chapter too by commenting or messaging me! or if you want to discuss mmorpgs or this au! o7
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr](http://koizumi.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/tsukaleoluvr69)!


	3. Chapter 3

“Lance, your back wasn’t straight enough that time. Try again!”

Lance lifts his over the rippling surface of the water, gasping for air. His coach, Mr. Lee, stands on the sidelines, clipboard in hand and a whistle hanging from his lips. Tugging off his goggles, he climbs onto the deck by the pool, shaking droplets of water from his body.

“Seriously?” he rubs his cheeks and looks out at the rest of the pool. Half of the team is staring at him with wide eyes. “That one was perfect.”

Mr. Lee purses his lips. The whistle falls from his mouth. “Are you back talking me, McClain?” he asks, slipping into Lance’s last name. Not a good sign.

Lance squeezes his eyes shut and musters all of his patience. Mr. Lee isn’t usually like this; it’s only because of Lance’s three missed practices in a row that he’s being unnecessarily harsh. Which, alright, Lance understands. One of the captains of the team probably shouldn’t be skipping training sessions to play video games, but critiquing his diving when he knows it’s impeccable isn’t helping either of them.

He’s too close to being kicked off for real to fuck around. He’s had a lot of close calls before, occasionally being called out when he enters the pool after not showing up for a few days. However, none of those incidents were nearly as imminent as this one.

And Lance _cannot_ give up his position.

“No, sir,” Lance grumbles. He pulls down his goggles and slicks his hair back. “I’ll go again.”

“Perfect,” Mr. Lee says, smiling at him.

He ends up practicing diving for a good portion of the two hours of their practice while their newest recruits take up the lane Lance usually uses. He admits, he’s a little more than jealous; he’s their star swimmer and having him train in something so elementary feels like the type of scolding that a parent would give their five-year-old child, not an eighteen-year-old less than a year away from college.

Mr. Lee pats him on the back when he pulls off his goggles for the last time that day, trying and failing to rub the water out of his eyes.

“No more missed practices, alright?”

Lance straightens his back instinctively, then nods. “Yeah, okay.”

“Good. I’d hate to lose our star swimmer.” Mr. Lee turns to face a group of freshmen, waiting for their swim results. “Now, Nancy, congratulations on getting today’s best time…”

Lance enters the changing room and tugs off his swim shorts. He’s soaked and covered in chlorine that makes him smell like a pool. A few boys linger around, and Lance rushes to dry himself off and exit the room before they can talk to him. He doesn’t feel like discussing his current train wreck of a school life.

At least he has his online life still. If worst comes to worst, he can join some professional Voltron PvP team, move to the West Coast to live with nine other guys, and drink soda all day for nutritional value.

He feels mildly queasy merely thinking about it.

Hunk is long gone by now. He’s likely online, gossiping with the others about Lance’s stupid-yet-beautiful crush and showing Green more ugly middle school pictures of him.

Lance really, really wants to go home and play, even just for the slight chance that Red will be able to get on today, but he has a date with another mullet-haired boy. Albeit, Lance has to admit, he’s a lot less friendly than Red is. And that’s saying something, because Red is definitely not the easiest person to talk to at first glance.

He takes out his phone from the front pocket of his backpack and taps the home button, lighting the screen up.

(17:42) Keith: Where are you?  
(17:55) Keith: I’ll wait for you by the front doors.

The front of the school isn’t very far from the pool. He has no idea why Keith didn’t walk over himself, unless he doesn’t want to intrude. That doesn’t seem like something Keith would worry about, though. He doesn’t know anything about him other than that he’s good at Chemistry and clearly has no friends at this school since he spends all his time texting; he gets the sense that Keith doesn’t particularly care about what other people think about it, though.

Keith is leaning against the doors, one hand in his pocket and the other holding his phone, validating Lance’s thoughts. One earbud is hanging onto his chest and the other is shoved into his ear. Whatever he’s listening to, it’s too loud for him to hear when Lance approaches.

Lance clears his throat. “Hey. You ready to go?”

Keith unplugs his headphones and hastily pushes his phone into his jean pocket. “Yeah. You have a car, right?”

“Were you riding on me having one?” Lance snorts. “Yup. It’s parked over here.”

“No, but I assumed you had one since you agreed in the first place. I was just checking.”

He can practically feel Keith frowning behind him. They go to the very back of the school’s parking lot; most of the students are long gone, and it’s relatively deserted. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier with every passing day, leaving them to walk in dim light.

“A blue car?” Keith glances over at him. Lance can’t tell if the comment is supposed to be condescending or a plain inquiry. It’s not like his car is bright blue—she’s a nice, dark colour that shines and doesn’t show much dirt.

“What’s wrong with that? Do you hate the colour blue?” Lance climbs into the driver’s seat and unlocks the other doors for Keith to get in as well. They both fasten their seat belts and Lance begins to back out, biting his lip and looking over his shoulder. Anything that has to do with parking isn’t his strong suit.

“No,” Keith says, pressing his elbow against the ledge of the window and leaning his cheek against his palm. “I like it, actually.”

“Oh,” Lance replies, somewhat surprised at Keith’s genuine comment. “Uh, well, thanks.”

Keith doesn’t say anything back. He opens his bag and continues to scroll through whatever it is he’s always staring at on his phone while Lance drives them to the storage unit.

The guard at the gate lets them in, and Lance stops in front of Keith’s marked unit. He’s still tapping away on his phone as Lance unbuckles himself and hops out of the car.

He clears his throat. “Keith.”

Keith’s head snaps up in realization and he gets out, opening up the door to the unit. It slides upwards, revealing the space inside. There’s half a dozen boxes stacked high and a chair sitting on its side at the back. It should only take one trip to pack it all into his car as long as they pack it tightly; it’s barely enough to warrant renting a storage unit in the first place.

“You know, you’re going to get hurt one day with how much you’re on your phone,” Lance says, walking over to one of the boxes. He can’t help himself; he pulls open the top and looks inside. He’s disappointed to see that it’s only clothes: some hoodies, sweaters, and a tank top sit at the top. “You don’t have much stuff. I was expecting more.”

Keith pointedly avoids looking at him as he hoists up the first box into his arms. All Lance can see of his face now is the hair sticking up at the top of his head.

“One person doesn’t need a lot to survive,” Keith answers. He leaves the unit and shoves the box into the back of Lance’s car.

Lance quickly puts the cover back on the box and follows him. He rearranges the boxes while Keith watches, trying to leave as much room as possible.

After a moment, Keith speaks up again. “I left a lot of my stuff back home with my best friend. It would cost too much to bring everything.”

Lance tilts his head back, then looks at Keith. Now Lance feels guilty again for bringing up what’s undoubtedly bothering him.

It reminds him of Red, who’s moving as well. And that mullet. The resemblance almost too much for Lance to handle. Well, he can’t physically help Red, but he’ll do his best to help Keith. While it’s annoying to have to cut into his gaming time to help, he’s not heartless. Far from him, he’d like to think.

“Sorry,” Lance gestures for Keith to follow again. “Is that who you’ve been texting?”

“Yeah.” They pick up another two boxes. This one’s heavier. Lance prays that they’re the appliances Keith brought. If not, he’s going to feel compelled to invite the poor guy over for food. “He can’t type well, so he sends me voice messages. It takes longer to go back and forth like that.”

“Oh.” Lance sets his box down in his car and pulls off the top. Much to his relief, there’s a microwave and a blender. He pushes it to the back and waits for Keith to set his down as well. “Does he have wrist problems? I used to get those from playing video games too much. I found some exercises online that helped a lot. I could give you a link to send to him.”

Keith shoots him a pitying look. “He only has one arm.”

“Sure, I’ll send it via text—Sorry, what?”

“He lost his right arm a few years ago, so it’s amputated just below the shoulder. He can type with one hand, but it takes a while, so he sends me video and voice messages instead. So I doubt exercises will help.” Keith’s nose crinkles and he sighs as if he’s exasperated. “Thanks for offering, though.”

Lance holds back a pout. How does everything he say somehow relate back to a depressing fact about Keith’s life? They need to talk about something happy for once.

He scrambles for a topic that has no possibility of ending up sad. Lance coughs into his arm, picking up the final box.

“Do you like video games? I’m pretty great at them. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m really good at them. I’ve won a lot of competitions for this virtual reality game called Voltron.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Keith comments, holding the chair on his back. “My best friend has the VR suit used to play Voltron. Since most of the games for it aren’t controller-based, he can usually play them with one hand. I liked watching him.”

“Yeah?” Lance grins. “That’s cool. We should play together sometime. I only have one suit ‘cus those things are stupidly expensive, but I have a PS4 Neo too.”

Keith looks at him. Another similarity he’s noticed between Red and Keith: they both look they haven’t cut their fringes in years. Red gets a pass because it’s a preset from the game. Keith has no excuse. The long hair suits him, though. He has a weirdly small and sharp face, and the hair that frames his cheeks make him look...

Lance is not going to finish that sentence and go down that rabbit hole. Both because it’s going to make him angst over Red internally and for reasons better left unsaid. He already has too much social stress in his life.

“Sure,” Keith says, then waits. Lance has no idea what exactly he’s waiting for before he realizes that they’re done packing his trunk. He closes it and starts the car again, as Keith does his seatbelt and pulls out his phone. He’s untangling his headphones when Lance taps his fingers against the steering wheel, attempting to seem nonchalant.

“If you want to listen to the message without headphones, I don’t mind. I won’t eavesdrop,” he says, then begins to drive out of the storage area.

“I don’t think you can’t not listen,” Keith replies. “I’m fine.”

He slips his headphones into his ears after untangling them and they lapse back into silence.

Lance isn’t foolish enough not to focus on the road, but he keeps one eye on Keith the entire ride. He clearly misses his best friend and home dearly. Lance can’t imagine having to move to a new place without his family, no matter what the reason was. And he has no idea why Keith moved anyways. He’s too afraid to ask unless it’s something equally as sad as the answers to his other questions.

He taps Keith’s address into his GPS and follows it, driving slowly so he doesn’t jostle Keith from his trance. It’s not like Lance has anything else to do except study. It’s much easier to procrastinate than do the English assignment that’s due in two days.

Eventually, Keith tugs his earbuds off again and closes his eyes, leaning the back of his head against the plush cushion of his seat.

Their town isn’t the biggest, and the distance between the storage unit, Keith’s house, and Lance’s house is less than twenty minutes during rush hour.

The difference in architecture between their neighborhoods is vast, however. Lance’s is all new homes; not exactly expensive, but nice, with amenities like air conditioning and heaters built-in. He can already tell that Keith’s house doesn’t have either of those things when he pulls into his driveway. The lawn and bushes are dead and covered in weeds, and there’s cobwebs lining the bottom of the brick.

“Yo,” Lance stops the engine. “We’re here.”

He pulls out his keys and turns to face Keith when he doesn’t reply. His eyes are still shut, and his eyelashes are so long that they brush over his cheeks.

God, when the colour of his eyes are masked, he looks exactly like Red. There’s a few differences, like the shape of the tip of his nose and lips and the curve of his eyebrows, but they’re indistinct compared to the similarities. Lance forces himself to reach out and shake Keith’s shoulder, waking up.

“Huh?” Keith mumbles, lifting his head.

“We’re here,” Lance repeats.

“Mm.” Keith licks his lips and looks out the window. “Right.”

They bring in the boxes and the chair one by one. The first step to Keith’s porch wobbles uncertainly under the weight, and Lance is confessedly terrified that it’s going to collapse. Keith may have the ability to make food and live, but his home doesn’t feel very homey at all.

“Sorry it’s so dirty in here,” Keith says. He slips off his shoes and sets them right by the front door. “Thanks for helping me.”

“You just moved in, I expected it to be messy.” He takes off his shoes as well, hopping on his heels. “I’ll help you unpack a bit before I leave. I don’t have anything else to do tonight.”

“I understand. You don’t care enough to study.”

Lance frowns until he sees Keith smiling and realizes he’s joking. Shaking his head, he huffs and picks up one of the boxes, opening it up. It’s the one with the clothes, and he doubts Keith will want him to look through his underwear and shit, so he moves onto the one beside it.

“I do study. Sometimes. Honestly, I studied more last year. Things have gotten a lot busier this year, with swimming and… uh, you know, stuff.”

“I do know stuff.” Keith sits down cross-legged on the wooden floor and pulls a box towards him.

“That’s not what I meant,” Lance whines, then laughs. Keith laughs as well and begins to take things out of his box, setting them on the floor.

Lance has appliances in his, so he walks back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. He hooks up the microwave and the blender, turning them both on briefly to make sure they work. Frankly, the interior of the house isn’t much better than the outside. He needs to bring some of his old posters to school so Keith will have things to cover the walls with.

“Do you like swimming?” Keith asks when Lance sits down across from him, opening another box.

“Hm? Yeah, of course. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I like competitions, so that’s why I do both the online ones and swim tournaments.”

“I see,” Keith says simply. “I don’t know how to swim. I did soccer back home.”

“Soccer? Hah. That’s easy stuff.” Lance wiggles his eyebrows at him. Keith glares back, but it’s weak.

Lance actually has no idea how to play soccer. It sounds easy, though. Right?

“What, are you also a semi-professional soccer player? You don’t look like one.”

Lance stops laughing. “What do soccer players look like?”

Keith suddenly stops his hands mid-air and looks away. He swipes his phone from the ground and slides it open.

“You have broad shoulders and long limbs, like a swimmer. That’s what I meant.”

Holy shit. Lance squints and leans forward slightly. Is Keith blushing? If he’s the type who gets embarrassed at friendly conversations, Lance is going to have so much fun.

“Oh, yeah? Well, you have a soccer player’s body.” Fuck if Lance knows what a soccer player’s body looks like. “You have… um. Nice legs.”

“Nice legs,” Keith echoes. He goes back to sorting through the boxes, tugging another one aside.

Now Lance is the one blushing. “You wear really tight pants!” Lance says accusingly.

“They’re not that tight,” Keith grumbles. “Why are you staring at my legs, anyways?”

“Your clothes are all impractical. It’s hard not to stare when they’re restricting your muscles and making it harder for you to move.”

Keith snorts, covering the bottom half of his face with his arm. “I don’t think I’m going to develop muscle problems from wearing jeans. Though I appreciate the concern, I think?”

“You’re welcome!”

Lance rubs his cheek until the red on his face ebbs away. The rest of Keith’s things are simple supplies like notebooks, books, and cans of food. It looks more like he packed for a vacation than to move. He must really not have had much important stuff back home if he filled his boxes with food.

“If you want to come over anytime, just tell me. I have five siblings, but my house is pretty big. We can just hang out in my room and eat food,” Lance says, watching Keith’s reaction carefully.

Some of Keith’s words come off as insults, but he’s not so bad overall. If Keith plays sports, it means he must like competition too. Lance can always find enjoyment in competing. It’s even better that they both like video games. He has a copy of the newest Street Fighter game that has only been touched by him and Hunk. It’d be nice to get some fresh blood in it.

“Sure,” Keith says easily. He closes the box he’s sorting through and stands up, lifting his arms above his head and stretching. “I think I’m going to eat dinner now, so…”

“Right.” Lance knows when it’s his cue to leave. He jumps up, nudging Keith’s side. “I’ll bring you some of my old stuff to decorate this place with. It’s so dreary in here.”

Keith looks away, puffing out his cheeks slightly. “I don’t really trust your taste.”

“That hurts me,” Lance grins, putting one hand over his heart and pretending to be in pain. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I’m not going to skip my third day of school.” Keith nudges him back. “Thanks for helping me again.”

“Anytime.” Lance pulls on his shoes and gives him a big wave. “See you!”

“Bye.” Keith waves back.

When he gets back home, his mom gives him a stern talk for not texting that he’ll be late. He apologizes profusely and runs up the stairs, not tripping this time, to sit at his computer.

He hooks up his phone to it to let it charge and checks his messages. He doesn’t feel like putting on the suit and opening up the game when Red isn’t there and they have no events planned, but he can scroll through the forums.

Their guild thread gets hundreds of messages a day. It’s barely about their actual guild anymore. Sometimes people discuss rumors about them; mostly, it’s a hub for top-tier event discussion. Lance replies to a few posts, helping out newer players asking them for advice, and then checks his private messages.

To User Blue from User Red  
Sent 01:19 November 13, 2020  
Subject Line: (None)

You logged off before I could thank you properly. I gave an item to Black to give to you. Ask him for it next time you get online. Thanks again, the old helmet was really uncomfortable. I don’t know whose idea it was to have the armour replicate physical effect in real life, but I hate them. It was causing me some serious headaches. So, thanks mostly for saving me from a lifetime of migraines.

Let’s 1v1 some time when I get back. I want to test out my stats with the new helmet.

Lance stares at the message for a good, long time, and then opens up Hunk’s messaging tab and begins to type furiously.

(20:29) Lance: oh my GOD  
(20:29) Lance: red wants to 1V1 ME because IM THE ONLY PERSON HE THINKS IS UP TO PAR WITH HIS SKILLS!!!!  
(20:29) Lance: and he GAVE BLACK AN ITEM TO GIVE TO ME (AS THANKS FOR THE HELMET???)  
(20:31) Lance: HUNK IM SCREMAMIGNDSAFKSAJ

He turns off his computer off and throws himself onto his bed, cuddling into his pillow and tucking it against his chest.

He had woken up that morning slightly disappointed, and now here he was thirteen hours later, with what was quite possibly the most amazing feeling of joy.

He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling, biting the inside of his cheek. He kept his spot on the swim team, did his good deed for the day, possibly made a new friend, and now his crush was complimenting him, no matter how obscure it was.

Red’s compliments weren’t easy to come by, not at all. He’s been on the receiving end of them many times before, but almost never privately. He feels like he’s about to cry.

It takes a lot of effort to not scream from how happy he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay for fast updates! more thief vs thief action next chapter. :^)
> 
> thank you for the super kind comments and reactions! i really appreciate it so, so much, especially since this fic means a lot to me on a personal level because of the nostalgia. keep them coming and thank you everyone for reading! 
> 
> as always, feel free to message me to discuss games or this au or tell me your thoughts. :D
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr](http://koizumi.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/tsukaleoluvr69)!


	4. Chapter 4

The next day goes even better than the previous one. Keith turns around in the middle of AP Calculus to talk to him about some equation he’s having difficulty with and Lance responds with a bit too much enthusiasm. 

When they complete the problem together, Keith gives him a tiny smile, and Lance almost passes out.

It’s not his fault. The more he looks at him, the more scarily alike he looks to Red. It’s difficult not to get lost staring into Keith’s eyes, imagining he’s Red leaning over Lance’s desk.

There is one thing that differentiates them: Keith smiles significantly less than Red. Lance hopes that he’ll open up more. After hearing Keith’s stories about his best friend, he feels like it’s his sworn duty to become his friend. 

Lance secretly thinks he’s already Keith’s friend, since he’s the only person from this school on Keith’s phone. He needs to introduce him to Hunk, too. That guy has a scary talent for making people feel comfortable.

After waving goodbye to both Keith and Hunk after Chemistry, he takes an hour to lap around the pool. There’s no official practice today; he unlocks the door with his captain key and keeps the lights off so no one will see him. The water relaxes his tight back muscles, and he floats, staring at the ceiling for a few minutes before climbing out and drying himself off.

When he gets home, he helps his sister with her homework and then rushes upstairs. He has a special do not disturb sign just for Voltron. It’s only allowed since he gives most of the money he earns from PvP competitions to his parents, else he’s sure they’d be barging into his room every few minutes.

“Blue,” Allura says happily when he loads in. She and Black are sitting at the table, having their evening not-tea. Lance doesn’t really see the point of drinking not-tea in a virtual world. It doesn’t give actual nutrients. He’s semi-convinced that it has some kind of magical property he isn’t aware of. 

“Hey,” Black says, setting down his cup. “How are you?”

“Good,” Lance answers, sliding onto one of the chairs beside Allura. “Anyone else been here?”

Allura purses her lips. “No. It seems everyone is busy with their lives,” she says contemplatively. “I understand. Most of you have school. Hopefully, we will all be here on the weekend.”

Lance presses his cheek to the table. Hunk is likely studying. He has no idea what Green does when she’s not online. Creating rockets, probably. And Red is moving to god-knows-where. He hopes Red considered the ping change when his family decided to move; it’s going to suck if Red ends up falling behind him in skill because of a little increase in lag.

“I think Green is on a school trip,” Black laughs. 

“Oh?” Allura grins back.

“She’s like a baby,” Lance snickers. Green is no less than two years younger than him, but Lance isn’t going to let her off easy. He never does.

“She’s in college,” Black says, smiling innocently at Lance.

Lance sputters, his thoughts coming to a complete stop. “What?!”

“Ah, yes. She told me about your aversion to personal discussion. We haven’t had much time to discuss real life activities lately, have we? I believe Green entered college in September,” Allura adds. She sips her cup of tea, hiding her widening smile.

Lance moves his face against his arm, groaning loudly. He wishes no one had told him so he doesn’t have to feel so bad about his own dropping grades. Green plays just as much as he does, and yet she’s somehow skipped like fifty grades?

“If something is the matter, you can always speak to us,” Black says, patting the top of Lance’s head like the older brother Lance never had. “We’ll understand if you need to take a break for school.”

“No,” Lance sighs, turning his head to look at them. “I’m fine. I wouldn’t get on if I wasn’t. I love you guys, but I wouldn’t sacrifice my future to play.”

Hopefully. He does tend to get overexcited when fighting and-or Red is involved. His head is only somewhat clear because Red isn’t there; somewhat, because looking at Keith for three hours was fucking with his identity perception.

“Hm,” Black hums, rubbing Lance’s back.

“Well, there’s no use in sitting around here.” Allura flicks her fingers and the cap vanishes into the house’s storage. “Would you like to spar with me, Blue?”

Lance lifts his head, his vision blurry from his eyes being shut. He hasn’t seen Allura fight in weeks, and he’s never heard of her sparring with anyone except Black on one occasion. “Really? Uh, why?”

Allura shrugs and stands up, shoving her chair in and leaning over the top. “No particular reason. Black is going to aid in a PvP competition. If you’d rather not, I suppose I’ll log off.”

“No, it’s—” Lance follows her hastily so she doesn’t try and leave before he finishes speaking. “Let’s do it. You want to get your ass kicked, huh?”

“That’s the Blue we know and love,” Black chuckles. “But don’t so crudely to your leader. I’ll see you two later.”

He disappears and Allura hides her laugh behind her hand. “Shall we, then?”

He and Red like to spar out in the fields. Well, it’s more Red who prefers it, since the trees and bushes allow him to hide and duck from Lance’s arrows. It’s good practice for both of their specialities; Lance’s aim and Red’s dodging. Allura takes him to the proper arena behind their guild house instead, where the others typically fight each other.

She turns away from him to prepare her attacks. Lance takes a deep breath and pulls out the bow he usually uses when fighting heavily armored foes. Since he practices mostly with Green and Red, he’s not nearly as practiced against opponents who are slow yet powerful. 

Allura isn’t as much of a tank as Black is, but she deals a shit ton of damage while still packing a lot of health. The biggest problem comes from her fighting style; she wields enchanted swords and axes, similar to Lance’s arrows. Unlike him, she can wield magic regularly as well. She’s one of the best players in the game, if not the best, at least in her class.

“Alright,” Allura says. She has an axe slung over her back, strapped to her shoulders. It flickers with clear, white light; her specialty, then, light magic. He gulps and holds out his hand, as is customary with all duels.

“Don’t go easy on me,” Lance says. As intimidating as she is, he could use the experience, and he’s sure he can go toe-to-toe with her if he puts in all of his effort, no matter how tough it’ll be.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Allura replies, then takes a step back. She moves to her place on one end of the arena, waiting for him, hands clasped in front of her.

Allura’s lack of urgency freaks him out. Green and Red are both hot-headed and eager; meanwhile, she’s waiting like she has all the time in the world to kick his ass. 

He pinches his nose and adjusts his bandana. “Okay,” he mutters to himself. “Show her why she accepted you in the first place.”

Tightening the strap on his bag of arrows, he steps onto his platform. It lights up, processing their names and statuses, and then the room lights up.

One by one, the lights get brighter and brighter, until the final light in the middle of the ceiling brightens, signifying the beginning.

Lance isn’t very agile. Unlike Red, he never trained in jumping or, god forbid, rolling out of the way. Allura slips her axe out of its place on her back and charges straight towards him, the tip of the axe running for his heart.

He hurries out of the way, his fingers slipping over an arrow. He sets it into his bow and, while backing away from her, waits for it to be covered in ice before he sends it flying. She slides across the ground and turns; the arrow hits the hilt of her axe, freezing it momentarily.

Twirling it, she shifts it to her other hand and then holds her now-free palm up. He sees the beginning of a flame at the tips of her fingers and scrambles to get another arrow out. He sends it flying to the ceiling instead of at her, casting a large, but frail, ice wall in between them. The flames hit the wall, causing it to melt onto the floor. 

“Blue,” Allura calls, shooting more flames at him without a break. He runs in circles, throwing arrows every time he takes in a breath. One of them hits her arm and she winces, shifting her stance so that her axe is in a better position to shield her. “Lance.”

His real name catches his attention and he trips. One of the embers knicks his wrist, burning him, and he drops his arrow. He barely manages to duck out of the way from a flash of hot, white light that flies over his head as he picks it back up, fitting it into his bow and letting it soar. “Y—Yeah?”

She runs out of the way of the arrow and clasps her hand shut, stopping the flames. Bringing out her axe again, she begins to race towards him. He prefers it this way; she’s not as fast as he is, and he can kite her back in circles as long as he doesn’t trip. Jumping back, he sways on his feet, sending an arrow at the place where she’s about to step to trip her.

“Hah,” she pants when the arrow cools the floor. “I would like to discuss something important with you.”

She gets to her feet much quicker than he expects, considering the weight of her armor. He falters, hearing her speak, and she manages to get close enough to burn part of his jacket with the light radiating from her axe. Without bothering to throw another arrow, he runs back, doing his best to leave trails of ice behind him.

“Is this really the time to talk?” Lance yells. “You said you weren’t going to go easy on me!”

“I hope you can tell that I most certainly am not,” Allura huffs, offended. She swings her axe again and he throws his head back as it grazes not even one inch away from him. He could do to channel his inner Red right about now and do some freaky, side-stepping dodging shit. 

He sends an arrow to her axe, freezing it again so he can move back properly, putting a respectable distance between them. “Is there a reason why you wanted to do this while trying to kill me?”

She laughs. It’s a rather terrifying image when she does it while moving towards him with her axe. As quickly as he can, he grabs as many arrows as he can fit in between his fingers and uses all of his energy to enchant them. Half of them fly towards the ceiling to rain down on her from above, and the other half go straight towards her.

Her laughter stops; she raises her axe to block the ones from above, and holds her hand out to blast away most of the arrows coming towards her front. Some of them still hit her, piercing her shoulder, and she cringes, the arrows dropping beside her.

It’s not like she’ll have the sensation of being stabbed in real life, but it still hurts, akin to stubbing a toe or elbow. He lowers his bow, struggling to keep his breath steady.

“I wanted all of your focus,” Allura says, dropping her axe to catch her breath as well. He sniffles, wiping dirt off his face. 

“Well, you definitely have it,” he grits out. 

She smiles at him gently. “It’s about Red.”

Okay, truce over, he decides, and creates an arrow surrounded by water. It’s not as dangerous as the ones tinged with ice, but it’s all he can muster after using most of his energy on raining the arrows down. 

She slices the arrow in half with her axe. Some of the water splashes her on the side of her face, cooling her body and dropping her energy levels. Her grip on her axe slackens, and yet she doesn’t stumble when she begins to race towards him again.

His chest tightens. Why was everyone bothering about his stupid crush lately? Allura of all people should know that there’s a negative chance of anything positive coming out of it. 

“I forgot to tell you this was an intervention,” she smirks, bringing her axe straight down. He’s losing his ability to dodge, and he didn’t have much of an ability to do so before. The axe scrapes his shoulder, causing him to bleed, and he bites his lip so that he doesn’t yelp.

“An intervention about what? I know workplace relationships aren’t allowed, okay! Please don’t kill me!” He turns and runs, shooting arrows haphazardly behind him to her direction. He hears her grunt; he can’t believe he managed to hit her at all. Having impeccable aim generally requires looking at the target. He would usually be proud of himself for pulling off a feat that ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population can’t even get close to, but he’s too busy sprinting for his life.

“On the contrary—” A wave of flames come out of nowhere, whisking past his head. He does yell this time, “—after much discussion, I have decided to give you two my blessing.”

“Uh,” he says, not knowing whether to focus on the pain in his shoulder, his cheek, his wrist, her words, or the axe that he knows is about to hit his back. He decides on the axe, spinning and sending an arrow blind to her. It hits her stomach, mostly protected by her armor. It’s nothing compared to the damage she can inflict on him in close-range. 

“You see, Lance,” her smile is brighter than her axe that’s about to hit his head. Okay. This is fine. What has he learned from watching Red? Flip back and kick away the axe with his feet? How the hell is he supposed to do that?

The axe is less than five inches away. He only has one chance. His feet are just about to leave the ground when she continues, “I know, on good sources, that Red has a crush on you as well.” And then she fucking winks and he suddenly has a splitting headache.

“Fuck,” he yells, holding his head after she pulls back her axe. One thing about leather helmets: they didn’t really protect against actual attacks to the head. The arena dims and their duel ends. The damage from their fight disappears, and Lance’s energy and health is restored. It doesn’t stop his head from throbbing. 

She holds out her hand, still smiling smugly. He glares at her weakly and accepts the held, hoisting himself back onto his feet. He slips his arrow back into his bag and stretches his back out. 

“That was dirty,” Lance grumbles.

“Oh?” Allura raises an eyebrow. “I do admit that I used it as a tactic to make you trip. That doesn’t make it any less true, however.”

“That’s not—that’s not funny,” he says, crossing his arms. Allura’s sense of humor isn’t usually this dark. His heart is still hammering wildly in his chest, and he knows he’s going to be out of breath and gross when he takes off the VR suit. He needs a break, not more teasing. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” she wags her finger. “Hear me out, Lance. I know you want to.”

The wider she grins, the more miserable he feels. He nods, rubbing his forehead. It’s not like he can say ‘no’ to her. She holds the fate of her position in the guild in her hands.

“A few months ago, I noticed your performance dropping in dungeons and fights. Less damage sent, and more damage taken. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first—it’s very natural for people to burn out when playing games. We’ve all gone through it. But, your damage has steadied at an output that’s lower than before, and it seemed like it wasn’t going to go back up.”

He already recognizes where she’s going with this. He waves his hands, taking a step back. “I’ll change positions, alright? I’ll stand in front of Hunk—Yellow, or something.”

“That would make things much more difficult for you. Having to maneuver around him instead of Red would mean less opportunities for you to shoot. I realize that your issues stem from your crush being unrequited, so I set out to see if that was really true.” She claps her hands. “And it’s not. So you two are free to do as you wish, and there will be no more worrying about love!”

Lance stares at her. She looks way too happy for this to be normal. Not that it would be normal in any sense of the word even if she was frowning.

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me.”

She purses her lips, then slaps him on the back. “I am trying to say that Red likes you back. Everyone knows it, except you two. I figured you would prefer me to be the one to put you out of your misery rather than Black. He does tend to make people feel guilty when scolding them. It’s that brother-like quality of his.”

Lance tries to move away, choking. “How do you know that?”

“Well, all of you have referred to him as ‘brotherly’ at least one time, so—”

“Not that, the other thing!”

She throws her head back and laughs. “I’m sorry, Lance. You two are both so easy to tease,” she says, wiping away invisible tears. “He disclosed it to me a few weeks ago, among other things that tipped me off. Regardless of how or why, I believe, both as your leader and your friend, that you should pursue this opportunity.” She goes back to clapping, bouncing on her heels. “How adorable would it be to have a couple in our guild?”

So either Lance is dead, or he’s dreaming. Those are the only two explanations for what’s happening. 

“Seriously?” is all he can manage to say.

“Of course!”

“Red likes me?”

“That is what I just said, yes,” she snickers openly at him.

“He told you those exact words?”

Allura gives him a vague hand gesture. “Somewhat. It was a much longer spiel, but yes.”

“Oh my god.” He slaps both of his palms to his cheeks. “Oh my god.”

“I have no reason to lie about something like this, Lance. And I would never, in the first place. I know how much Red means to you.”

She looks honest. She sounds honest. And she’s never outright lied to him before.

Red likes him. Red likes him. Him, being Lance, being him, being the person who Red likes?

How had he never noticed it before? Sure, Red laughs around him a lot, and they’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, and Red once complimented Lance’s hair, but—

Holy shit.

Red likes him.

“Oh my fucking god,” he says. Allura stands patiently before him, witnessing his breakdown with a twinkle in her eyes.

That stupid, beautiful, talented, stubborn little shit actually likes him. Probably. Hopefully. God, Lance is praying so hard right now, Allura has no idea.

He thinks about all the times Red reached for his hand, or accepted one of his hugs, or made some other display of affection that he didn’t usually do. He had figured it was a sign of their developing friendship, not—not his wildest hopes and dreams.

“I recommend you take a day or so to think, while Red is offline.” The door to exit the arena swings open. “If you need my advice, always feel free to simply ask.”

Allura begins strolling towards the exit, and the movement makes Lance’s head snap up. He gathers his belongings and follows her, trying to keep up with her pace. She’s not walking that fast, he’s just too winded.

Because Red likes him. Yeah. That certainly was something that could trip him up.

“Wait, I don’t—Why did you have to fight me to tell me this?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing. 

“Ah, that,” she hums. “That was your annual performance test to determine if you were fit for this guild. While the results aren’t as good as last year’s, I’ll attribute that to stress and your class being nerfed. If it makes you feel better, Red also scored much lower than before.” She pats his cheek. “Congratulations on keeping your spot.”

She leaves, disappearing through the portal, and Lance pulls off his VR helmet without bothering to log off, letting the world fizz into nothing around him.

He gasps for air, unzipping the suit and pulling on his shirt while throwing himself to his computer chair. His fingers are shaking as he types to Hunk.

“Please be online, please be online…”

(21:20) Lance: RED LIKES MME  
(21:20) Lance: MEM  
(21:20) Lance: ME**8**  
(21:21) Hunk: Yeah everyone knows lol  
(21:21) Hunk: Who told you?  
(21:22) Lance: i fuckgin hte yofu all  
(21:22) Lance: ALLURA  
(21:23) Hunk: Congrats man  
(21:23) Hunk: We were going to wait for one of you to realize but I guess she got fed up  
(21:23) Lance: hhjdhfmdfnsjdfajsdfhasdjf  
(21:23) Hunk: I gotta go tho I’m tutoring someone, you can rant to me tmrw at school  
(21:27) Lance: AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!ahhhhhHAHHHHHHAHDSAJHHH AHHHH AHH AHHH AH

He slams his face against his keyboard and screams.

Suddenly, all the worries he has about school and swimming leave him. Those things matter, but in that moment, nothing else is as important as the fact that _Red likes him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all the kind comments and responses! :D this fic is so much fun to write. the next update will most likely come after i write chapter 21 of my other fic, crossroads, so hopefully within the next few days!
> 
> tell me what you think below, or by messaging me! 
> 
> talk to me on [tumblr](http://koizumi.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/tsukaleoluvr69)!


End file.
